by Helen Ivory | Jul 9, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
Witness By Jonathan Kinsman. Burning Eye Books. £9.99. In his new pamphlet ‘Witness’ , the poet Jonathan Kinsman has taken the gospel of the New Testament and drawn inspiration from the disciples and their stories, the then fiercely...
by Helen Ivory | Jun 20, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
Poetry comes from a deeply personal inner landscape. But what happens when external geographies bring their own emotional and social clout to the party? Enter John Dust – the riveting personification of Louise Warren’s native Somerset. Dust feels...
by Helen Ivory | May 16, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
As with her previous collection, My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams), Hex explores ‘the extraordinary with the everyday […] myth, magic and fairy tale’, but goes darker. It quotes Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) ‘She was feeling...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 24, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
This book has an unusual premise in that it’s about something you wouldn’t want to read about. It’s about one of the most difficult subjects – child loss – and yet Hopkins’ writing allows the subject the sensitivity and accessibility that it needs. The...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 25, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
Alice Allen’s first collection Daylight of Seagulls takes the occupation of Jersey during WW2 as its subject, but she weaves so much more. In her vivid introduction she tells us that she grew up there in the 70’s and 80’s. ‘ we weren’t taught about the...